Realtime estimation of average sand grain diameter and sand bed height and mass for a trailing suction hopper dredger

A Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger (TSHD) in the sailing process, excavating seabed sediment with the drag head and pumping it through the pipeline to the spoil hopper sedimentation. The spoil hopper sedimentation process, as a critical factor affecting the loading yield and efficiency of a dredger, is susceptible to the influence of different average sand grain diameter $$ . However, the soil type tends to change continuously during the loading process, making it difficult to obtain the $$ by measurement or calculation. In this paper, combined with the existing simplified one-dimensional sedimentation model and simulated loading data, the Bootstrap Particle Filter (BPF), Gaussian Particle Swarm Optimized Particle Filter (GPSO-PF), Assisted Particle Filter (APF), Continuous-Discrete Feedback Particle Filter based on the constant feedback gain approximation (CD-FPF-CG) and the Galerkin method feedback gain approximation (CD-FPF-GL) are applied in the numerical simulations for online estimation of important variables such as the average sand grain diameter $$ , the sand bed height $$ and mass $$ , respectively. The simulations results show that the CD-FPF-CG has a higher numerical accuracy and efficiency than the BPF, GPSO-PF, APF and CD-FPF-GL. Therefore, the CD-FPF-CG is used to estimate the above important variables for the actual vessel and the initial value of the average sand grain diameter $$ for the CD-FPF-CG is determined via Simulated Annealing Multiple Population Genetic Algorithm (SAMPGA).